The words came in fits and starts, barely coherent, while a confusion of feelings whirled inside her. Of course she was glad Jeffrey had noticed the necklace, glad he’d asked her about it and given her tacit permission to talk about the one big event of her day. Yes, thrilled about all that. Except… except…
I saw it right off, he’d told her. As soon as you got out of the car.
So why hadn’t he said anything then? Why had he strung her along for more than half an hour, chatting about his f-stops and exposure times, while she waited in an agony of suspense for some word of acknowledgment?
She thought she knew the answer. It was simply one more tactic he employed to maintain control, He’d known what she wanted him to say, and he’d found pleasure in withholding that small gift as long as possible, like a sadist who dangles a morsel of food near his starving victim, just out of reach.
In that moment Wendy hated the man across the table from her. Yet in a strange way she loved him too. Because at least he had noticed, and now he was letting her talk, and-oh, God-did she ever need to talk. She needed it badly enough even to put up with his manipulations and smiling lies.
She went on talking and talking and talking, telling him every detail of her purchase. Probably she was boring him or making a complete fool of herself or doing something else that was utterly wrong; but for once, she didn’t care.
8
At six o’clock, having finished his dinner, Rood set about making his preparations for the night’s work.
From his bookshelf he pulled out a copy of the 1990 Thomas Guide for Los Angeles County, a spiral-bound map-book with an alphabetized directory covering every street in the county. He pinpointed Miss Wendy Alden’s address-9741 Palm Vista Avenue-and marked it in red ink.
Then he peered into the large canvas drawstring bag he used for carrying his tools and trophies, taking inventory of its contents.
The hacksaw, fitted with a fresh tungsten-carbide blade. Two spare blades, in case the first one broke; bone was tough. The clay gryphon, carefully wrapped in plastic. His Toshiba tape recorder with a built-in omnidirectional microphone, loaded with a blank thirty-minute cassette; he would clip the tape recorder to his belt before the kill. A jumbo two-gallon Baggie, in which Miss Alden’s head would be sealed. A wire twist tie for the Baggie. Saran Wrap for the hacksaw, which would be bloody, dripping; no use getting the bag soiled. A metal loid and wire tool for opening locked doors. A roll of electrician’s tape and a hammer, useful for breaking windows with a minimum of noise; he’d tried that technique for the first time at Miss Osborn’s place, and it had worked wonderfully well. A Tekna Micro-Lite miniature flashlight, four inches long. A pair of night-vision binoculars for scoping his victim from the street.
His weapon and his leather gloves were tucked in the side pockets of his black winter coat, which he now shrugged on.
Yes, he decided as he reviewed a mental checklist. He had everything.
He left his apartment, shut and locked the front door, and let the screen door bang shut. In the newly fallen darkness he crossed the courtyard, a patchwork of cracked concrete and rectangular grass strips. From the apartment across the way came the steady barking of Mrs. Weiman’s German shepherd, Sherlock. The dog was often allowed to wander the courtyard, and Rood invariably stopped to scratch him behind the ears. He loved animals. In truth, he vastly preferred them to human beings. He had never been what one might call a “people” person.
His car was parked on the street. It was a 1963 Ford Falcon, the Futura Sports Coupe model, a white two-door hardtop with a tan interior. When viewed from the front, the Falcon looked squarish, almost boxy, but in profile its lines were as sleek and streamlined as a Fifties rocketship, the kind that was always setting down on a planet of nubile young women and enlarged iguanas, amid the alien vegetation of Griffith Park.
The word FORD was emblazoned in silver capitals across the hood, above the chrome grillwork and the huge round glassy headlights. Under the hood, a V-8 engine lay concealed, quiet now, like a somnolent animal, but poised to awaken with a growl at the turning of a key. More bold silver spelled out FALCON across the rear end of the trunk lid; below it gleamed the taillights, each one a red circle of molded plastic with a plastic knob embedded in its center, looking uncannily like a nipple. Arrowlike strips of chrome had once graced the sides of the car, but these had fallen off, leaving empty grooves in the metal.
Rood had bought the Falcon in Idaho a month before his move to L.A. two years ago. He was not a connoisseur of classic cars, but he appreciated old-fashioned workmanship, the solidity of a thing made to last. At the time of his purchase, the Falcon’s odometer had registered eighty-six thousand miles; he’d realized, of course, that the car must have clocked far more mileage than that, with the odometer resetting to zero every hundred thousand miles. Yet even after the decades of hard service the car had delivered, it remained dependable; never once had it broken down.
What had drawn him to the car most of all, however, had been neither its design nor its durability, but that name: Falcon. The bird of prey, riding the high thermals, quartering the land below, then swooping out of the sun, its shadow the black shape of death, claws extended to snatch up the squeaking innocent, and rising, wings spread, talons strewed with blood. Falcon. Yes. Rood liked the sound of that.
Unlocking the door. Rood placed his canvas bag carefully on the floor of the backseat, then slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. When he closed his fists over the simulated wood-grain steering wheel, he smiled, pleased with the hard smoothness of it.
He turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights to cut the night, and motored south for a few blocks, hooking east on Olympic Boulevard. As he drove, he tuned the radio to a pop-music station. Rood liked songs, nice songs, not this modern rap garbage or this heavy-metal ugliness.
“Desperado” came on. The song was one of his favorites. He admired the romanticized portrait of the outlaw, the loner, the man who refused to play by the rules. Of course the message of the song was that the loner was wrong, that he should give up his life and settle down, become ordinary. But Rood was sure that the message had been inserted only to appeal to the gutter filth who bought popular records; their mean prejudices and narrow outlook must be appeased.
The same cowardly appeasement could be seen in Hollywood movies. At the end of nearly every one, the villain got killed in some messy and horrible way, and the audience clapped their hooves and baaed and bleated in satisfaction. But, in truth, the villains were the real heroes, because they stepped outside society’s boundaries, they dared for greatness, they endured the loneliness of the outcast, just as the musical desperado did; and though their lives ended in blood and fury, they died as martyrs to a great cause, the cause of superiority to the mundane.
Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n, Rood thought, quoting Mr. John Milton, who in turn had been quoting Lucifer.
He turned south on Beverly Glen Boulevard, passing the apartment building where Miss Rebecca Morris had lived. The sight evoked pleasant memories; he smiled in warm nostalgia. Miss Morris had made a fine kill, but there were far finer ones to come. What he had done in the past few years was only the beginning. Dimly he’d glimpsed his future, and it was magnificent. Songs and poems would commemorate him. Some unborn Homer would chart his odyssey. Statues would be raised in his image, and monuments in his name.
It had been a long road he’d traveled to reach the threshold of such greatness. As a child he could never have predicted his awesome destiny. He had been weak then. Yes, weak from the beginning.